


Obsidian

by buttered_onions



Series: Voltron: AU Fills [6]
Category: The Obsidian Trilogy - Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Keith (Voltron)-centric, tumblr requests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttered_onions/pseuds/buttered_onions
Summary: Magic runs the Mage-City of Armethalieh; mage students like Keith train for years hoping to climb ranks into the elite inner circle, casting the spells that ensure the city's maintenance, power, and prestige. That's what Shiro's studying for. That's what Keith's studying for.That's why Shiro's disappearance doesn't make any sense.Crossover/fusion/AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The AU fills carry on! We're getting to the end slowly but surely. This fill concludes what I've termed the Fantasy Trio of requests; such fun to write. The particular prompt here was from 15strawberri3s: if the Voltron cast lived in your favorite fantasy series, what would that look like?
> 
> My favorite fantasy series is a High Fantasy book trilogy called The Obsidian Trilogy, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, as indicated in the tags. The protagonist is a young man named Kellen, who struggles to find his place in the human-only Mage-City where he lives. After discovering a different, “dangerous” form of magic, he’s cast out and goes on to find epic adventures outside the City Walls, including escapades with elves, dragons, centaurs, and discovering his own calling in the larger world. I strongly recommend it if you’ve got time to spare this holiday season.
> 
> Since it's little-known, I’ve included quotes from the source material to help with context. No copyright infringement is intended. 
> 
> Shamelessly unbeta'd; all mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

**00\. Magic always has a Price.**

 

> _This was the Mage-City of Armethalieh. Mages had built it, Mages ruled it, and Mages were the only people of any real consequence in it, though it had nobility and rich men in plenty._
> 
> _…when it came to power and the wielding of it - well - Mages were the only men who had it, and they guarded their privileges jealously._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 14_

 

The Mage-City of Armethalieh is also called The Golden City, so titled for a reason. All your needs are taken care of, here; people want for basically nothing. High Magick runs the city. It regulates the money, the weather, the bell towers ringing in perfect unison and harmony. It steadies the waters in the Harbor; cleans the streets at night; keeps food from spoiling; can heal illness, disease, and charm all manner of objects and problems into impeccable compliance. High Magick rules the city. It’s orderly. Prescribed. Perfect. Nothing changes, here. Nothing needs to.

If you live ‘out there’, beyond the Wall -

\- why would you? No one wants to be ‘out there’, out in the _wild_. The weather’s uncontrollable. It’s chaotic. There are demons. There are creatures who _don’t look like us_. If they aren’t human, they’re not allowed into our Harbor, through our Wall. If they were worth talking to - _dealing_ with - they’d be in here. And they aren’t.

Life here is better. Life here is best. _Other_ types of lifestyles? _Other_ people, _other_ cultures, _other_ experiences and _other_ types of magick?

Surely no one could want anything other than life here in Armethelieh.

Keith doesn’t.

But that was before Shiro disappeared.

 

**01\. Gunderson**

 

> _The Mage College…was surrounded by the homes of the Mages, and no one who was not himself a Mage or a Mage-to-be had ever set foot upon the grounds. Many of the wonder tales circulating about the City dealt at great length with a young Apprentice’s first sight of the College. All were completely inaccurate, as none of the fabulists had ever actually seen it._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 55_

 

There’s something about the new student that Keith can’t quite put his finger on.

New Guy arrives on scene at the Mage College of Armethelieh a full two months after Shiro disappears (“dead”, the news is, the news Keith _can’t accept)._ Keith walks into class one morning to find the new student, small and sharp-eyed beneath thick glasses, standing his ground against the interrogation of several richer students. The Rich Students’ wealth and parentage shows in the subtle paneling in their nicely patterned blue Student robes; Keith’s robes are the same color, but lacking in embroidery or a perfectly tailored fit.

“You’re a little late to be entering classes at the College,” one of the Rich Students says. There’s not enough room for Keith to squeeze past the firing squad. He could wait, but Keith isn’t keen on lingering out in the hall any longer than he has to. Lingering invites questions. Keith’s not here to banter stupid banal words. Shiro was good at that. Keith isn’t.

“I’ve been studying under a private tutor,” New Guy says. His own robes are worn and stained with spells gone wrong, the sigil for _Ashan_ (or maybe _Kushan,_ Keith can’t tell from here) near burned into the sleeve. The hem’s fraying, just like Keith’s. Hand-me-downs.

The richest of the interrogators scoffs, a ginger-haired brat Keith frankly can’t stand (like that’s a differentiating factor, Keith can’t stand any of them). “Family name?”

“Gunderson,” says New Guy. Keith’s never heard of them.

Ginger-haired Rich Brat squints, grey eyes narrowed like a snake’s. Keith’s been the subject of that scrutiny often enough to hate it. “I don’t know that family.”

“We’re not money,” Gunderson says bluntly. Keith throws caution aside and goes for it, the sleeve of his robe bumping into Rich Brat.

“Watch it, Kogane,” the Brat snaps.

“You’re in the way,” Keith bites back, and carries on to the far corner where his seat is.

 

 **02\. Error**  

 

> _Money bought magic, and magic made money, and no matter how lowly born a Mage was…he could count on becoming rich before he was middle-aged. He might become_ very _rich. He might aspire to far more than mere wealth, if he was powerful enough: a seat on the High Council, and a voice in ruling the City itself._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 15_

 

Shiro’d been on that track, they said. From Student Apprentice to Undermage without a problem, they predicted, all the way up to High Mage probably in no time at all. In fact, Shiro would have made a fantastic Arch-Mage, way better than Iverson. Keith wouldn’t have been surprised to see Shiro on the High Council one day; Shiro was talented, and patient, exactly the kind of man the Council needed. There weren’t enough men like Shiro in their ranks. Probably why he never would have been admitted. It’s not like it matters now.

Shiro’s disappearance isn’t advertised. No official announcement is made, yet in the circles that Keith walks and the halls of the Mage College, everyone knows. The scandal lingers for months, borne in the brightly lit streets of the Mage Quarter, hovering in corners at parties. Speculation is rampant, for all that no one knows anything more than this: one morning Student-Apprentice Shirogane and Student-Apprentice Holt _did not come to class._ They never did again. 

Everyone has ideas, of course. Magical error? A rare Upper-level working, encouraged by a mentor? A friend? It’s all too easy for those to go wrong, especially unsupervised. The High Magick is known for its precision, but there can be thousands of steps to take to achieve such perfection: sigils to cast, lines to trace on the floor in the proper ingredient and color, chants to be made and the correct incantations uttered. It would be too easy to miss one.

Except Shiro didn’t _miss steps._ He’s meticulous. Ordered. Smart. He didn’t make _errors_.

What else, then? Keith can’t stop thinking about it. Possible reasons jar in his head; nothing settles. Nothing fits. It wasn’t anything the College had scheduled that’s responsible for Shiro’s disappearance; Shiro would have told him. He wasn’t on duty. He wasn’t attending extra classes or tutoring. He wasn’t scheduled.

But “dead” doesn’t fit either. It’s too…neat. Not when Shiro’d talked to him just that morning, mere hours before - before - and he’d been fine. Distracted, maybe, but fine.

 _Do you ever think,_ Shiro started to say, that fateful morning. Keith’s replayed this conversation so many times, reaching for some clue, a hint, _anything_.

 _Think about what?_ Keith asks. In his mind Shiro frowns out the window again, fingers of his right hand twitching against the sill. His wand lies on the table behind them.

 _What’s out there?_ Shiro says. Keith closes his eyes. _I’ve…Keith, if I told you I’ve found something, would you keep it a secret?_

 _Of course,_ Keith had promised, like an idiot, like a fool. _Of course._

Shiro’s smile did not reach his eyes. _Later, then. When I’m - sure._

_Shiro?_

_It’s nothing like that,_ Shiro hastens to reassure him. _But it is…different. I don’t think the High Council would like it. I know Iverson wouldn’t._

 _I won’t tell,_ Keith’d promised. _But what is it?_

Shiro hadn’t said. He’d promised to show Keith later, but though Keith waited and waited, standing on the corner of the street as the bell towers rang Evensong, then First Night Bells, and then Midnight, Shiro never arrived.

 

The one thing Keith wants, more than anything, is to have Shiro back.

If he can’t have that, then all Keith _needs_ is to find out _why not._

**03\. Pidge**

 

> _“Try not to be any more featherbrained than absolutely required…do_ think _, will you? Have you_ ever _seen a female Mage in this City?”_
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 48_

 

The friendship Keith forges with Gunderson - _Pidge_ \- is completely different than Keith’s friendship with Shiro. There’s something Keith and Pidge have that binds them together into a complex sort of pact no one else at the College, or even the City, could understand. A common purpose. A strong desire for an anchor, maybe. Both of them searching. Both of them desperate for a friend.

Just like Keith, Pidge can be hot-tempered, short-fused…at least on one subject in particular.

“Women can’t do magic,” Ginger Rich Brat says loudly in the hallway one afternoon, as Pidge and Keith are leaving Maths. Pidge bristles next to Keith. It’s not subtle. Rich Brat blinks. “What’s gotten into you, Gunderson?”

“Nothing,” Keith says. Pidge isn’t listening.

Rich Brat shakes his head, spreading his hands wide to his friends. “Honestly. _Girls_ aren’t like us. If they were meant to do High Magick why aren’t they here with the rest of us? The answer: they simply aren’t born with it. The capability, the _intellectual requirement_ , is too much for their feeble little minds to handle. Women are essentially unimportant - ”

“That’s _not true,”_ Pidge snaps. His Maths notes crumple in his fist, near ruined.

Rich Brat pauses, raising an offended eyebrow. “What did you say?”

“He’s talking to me,” Keith interrupts quickly, grabbing Pidge’s arm. Pidge tries to jerk free; Keith hangs on, squeezing tight as he glares at the offensive Rich Brat whose name Keith should really learn. Shiro probably knew. Keith doesn’t care. “I don’t remember inviting you to our conversation. _Excuse us.”_

He doesn’t stay to see what furious shade of red Rich Brat’s face turns, but pulls Pidge away by the elbow.

“Let go of me!” Pidge snaps. Keith doesn’t until they’re around the corner and halfway down the next hall.

“Don’t take them too seriously,” he hisses, finally letting go.

Pidge yanks his arm free. “Did you _hear -”_

“Yes, I heard,” Keith shoots back. “Don’t. You’ll be expelled and that won’t help anybody.”

“They’re not going to expel me for speaking my mind,” Pidge says, adjusting his sleeve angrily.

Pointedly, Keith says, “That’s not what I meant. You can do more good on the inside than out there, right?”

Pidge stills. Behind his glasses - yes, Keith will keep using those pronouns as long as it isn’t safe - his eyes grow very, very wide.

“Show them,” Keith says. Pidge drops his arm, cradling one fine-boned wrist in the palm of his other hand. “Get to the top and show them they’re wrong. Not now. _Then_. Patience.”

“ ‘Patience yields focus’,” Pidge choruses along with him. He sighs. “Right. I…Keith? Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Keith says.

 

“How long have you actually been studying?” Keith asks, one evening, late. They’re in a private practice room on the Mage College Grounds; Pidge is tracing sigils through the air. They glow, hanging, and fade. He’s excellent.

“Since forever,” Pidge says. The sigil for _Eron_ glows a perfect trio of warm colors in the air; he drags his wand over to link it to the sigil for _Batun_ , tracing, tracing. “My brother taught me.”

“Matt,” Keith says.

“Matt,” Pidge confirms, tightly. “Did Shiro say anything the night before he disappeared? Anything at all?”

Keith hesitates. Pidge doesn’t push, just traces sigils in the air in their private study room and waits. His wand glows as he moves it, concentrating absently.

 _What’s out there?_ Shiro whispers, a memory. _Keith, if I told you I’ve found something, would you keep it a secret?_

If anyone knows how to keep a secret, it’s Pidge.

_I don’t think the High Council would like it. I know Iverson wouldn’t._

“He was doing something illegal,” Keith says, slowly. The words hurt, but of all the rumors Keith’s chased and thought and beaten down over the last few months, this one - this one sticks. It burns.

 _Later,_ Shiro murmurs. _I’ll tell you later. When I’m sure. Can you meet me -_

“Then he’d be imprisoned,” Pidge says, grimly. “That’s got to be where my brother is, too. They have no reason to kill either of them.”

Keith blinks. “Does Armethalieh even have a prison?”

Pidge shakes his head. “I don’t know. We need a Map. A map of the City. Do you think the Great Library would have one? I can’t get in, but maybe you could.”

“You can’t?” Keith asks, surprised.

“Not going to try quite yet,” Pidge says, a half-quirk of his lips in a wry smile. “It was hard enough hoodwinking the Guard Statues here at the College. Would you go? Meet me back here first thing tomorrow, before class. If you find a Map, make a copy. I’ll teach you the spell.”

 

**04\. The Library**

 

> _They looked like workbooks of some sort…but they weren’t any of the recognized Student books, or anything like them. The handwriting was neat but so small that the letters danced in front of his eyes, and the way that the letters were formed was unfamiliar to him, slightly slanted with curved finials. But it seemed to him that he recognized those three titles from_ somewhere.
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 23_

 

Keith doesn’t recognize the Books, the first time, although some part of him will wonder later if he always knew. This is a game-changer. This is something big, something real, something terrifying and earth-shattering. This is part of a deeper story.

This is…unbelievable.

For a moment Keith forgets the maps of the City, spread out on the table behind him in the Great Library. He forgets Pidge, waiting for Keith to bring back a copy, waiting for news, waiting for her brother who won’t come back. He nearly even forgets Shiro, lost somewhere, because Keith’s pulling out three separate slim volumes from the shelves with careful shaking fingers, peeling them open to read hand-written spidery title pages in his careful Magelight.

_The Book of Sun._

_The Book of Moon._

_The Book of Stars._

Three innocent, skinny tomes bound in old leather, hiding on the shelf behind all the maps like they’ve been - waiting. For him. For him to come along to this exact shelf, in this exact moment.

Keith stares. There are not Academic textbooks. He’s never seen these before in all his life. He’s never even _heard_ of them.

What _are_ these?

 

**05\. The Books of the Wild Magic**

 

> _The Books, if they had not actively sought him out, had surely_ picked _him - or something connected with them had. …What was it about_ him _that had made them pick him? Just what was it about_ him _that was “right”?_
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 58_

 

Keith smuggles the Books out of the library under his jacket. He smuggles them home and reads the books cover to cover, barely able to believe his eyes, unable to stop.

This is crazy. This is _crazy_.

The magic in these books - and it is _magic_ , not _magick -_ is nothing like he’s ever been taught. This is a _Wild Magic_ , unrelated to the precision and the practice and the stuffy regimental rules of the _High Magick_ that Keith’s been training to understand for years. These books aren’t laid out linearly; they don’t make any sense. There’s theory in here he doesn’t understand, about give-and-take, the concept of _asking_ for what you want and being willing to pay some sort of _price_ for the gift you receive. That’s it. That’s…it.

This can’t be possible.

His fingers trace the words again. _The Book of Moon_ is a weird cross between philosophy and etiquette (something about _if you benefit from the magic, you are the one who must pay the price_ ), and _The Book of Stars_ just doesn’t make sense. _The Book Of Sun_ is mostly spells, really, even if they’re spells Keith’s never seen before. There’s no sigils, no chanting, not even use of a wand. The ingredient list is simple: leaves, gathered from trees. A handful of words. The first spell doesn’t even _have_ an ingredient list, other than a single drop of blood and the instruction to focus strongly on what the caster _desires_.

Keith stares.

The handwritten label on top of the page says this is a _Spell of Finding._

**06\. MagePrice**

 

> _Wild Magic is anathema for good reason. It is totally unpredictable. It offers you your desires, but grants them in its own twisted fashion - affecting not only you, not only those you know, but innocent parties who have never met you and_ certainly _do not deserve to be caught up in your spells and have their lives ruined by your foul meddling. It is a perverted form of_ true _magic._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 146-147_

 

Keith pricks his finger on the knife he always carries with him, watches the single drop of blood well up.

Keith closes his eyes, and Keith Asks.

_Help me Find out what’s happened to Shiro._

_Please._

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting. A flash of light, maybe, a gust of wind powerful enough to rustle all the papers on his desk? None of that happens. Instead there’s only a deep sense of _pressure_ , a roaring in his ears like they’re full, like they need to pop but can’t. A deep _waiting_ presses on his shoulders, swallows his breath. The world slows.

A voice, less a voice than a feeling, immediate and perfectly understandable.

_When the choice comes, you must decline._

More waiting.

The choice? What choice?

…it doesn’t matter. Keith will do anything for this answer. For Shiro.

 _I accept,_ he thinks. Says. The pressure vanishes, gone like a whisper. Keith opens his eyes.

Nothing’s changed. Outside the evening rain has just begun to fall, gentle and soft. No one knocks on his door. No wind throws aside the curtains with sudden answers.

It didn’t work.

It didn’t work.

 

**07\. Illegal**

 

> _These things don’t happen by accident. There are no accidents in the Wild Magic. Now, I don’t know anything about him, and it’s impolite to ask, but I suspect that helping you was his price, either for something that Wild Magic did for him in the past, or for something that he’s asked for in the future._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pg. 215_
> 
> _(Parts of Iverson’s speech below is from the sequel To Light A Candle, pg. 200)_

 

Keith’s arrested before school even begins the next day.

Someone saw him take the Books out of the Library, maybe; he isn’t given a reason for the four High Mages who show up outside his home early the next morning and march him straight to the Courthouse, straight underneath to the - _to the prison._ Wild hope surges through his panic; Keith glances in every cell as he’s marched roughly past, but they’re all empty. He’s thrown in a rough cell of his own and left there all day to stew, to ponder, to _worry_ until nightfall, when he’s escorted out of the cell by stone golem guards who wrestle him up a separate set of stairs and into the Trial before the High Council of Mages themselves.

Iverson’s cold _I told you so_ face will burn in Keith’s memory for years.

“You were seen smuggling these Three Forbidden books out of the Great Library,” Iverson says. He is the Arch-Mage of the High Council; he is holding Keith’s Three Books of Wild Magic gingerly by his fingertips, like they’ll burn him. It’s incriminating evidence found in _plain sight on Keith’s desk_ , where he’d fallen asleep on them waiting for some sign the Finding Spell had worked. He’s still waiting. “Do you deny this?”

“No,” Keith says. 

“Do you know what these are?” Iverson asks.

Keith says nothing.

Iverson leans forwards, peering down from where the Council sits on their raised dais. Keith’s observed as a bug trapped under a glass, the semi-circle of High Councillors staring down their noses in judgement and cold blankness. Keith fights down his shiver and holds his head high.

“I do not know how these instructions of _Dark Magic_ were in our Library, but you could not have found them alone,” Iverson continues. “Who were you working with? Who told you what these are?”

No one. There’s only one other person Keith talks to in this City, and Pidge doesn’t even know where he is. Pidge, waiting for him in the practice room before class. Pidge, waiting, because Keith spent the day in a jail cell. Keith, on Trial for a - for what? A spell that didn’t even work. Shiro’s still gone. Keith didn’t find out anything after all.

Iverson sighs, laying the books back down on the tall desk. “Listen, Kogane. You’re smarter than this. We can smooth this all over. All you need to do is make public apology, personally burn these books, and renounce this behavior entirely. We’d speak no more of it.”

Keith blinks, startled. Burn the - are they _that illegal?_ “What?”

“Be sensible, Kogane,” Iverson says, over the murmur of the other Councillors. “There’s no need to lose any more Mages.”

Any… _what?_

“Or what?” Keith snaps, unable to calm the flush of anger that races through him. “You’ll do to me what you did to Shiro?”

It’s a guess, a blind shot in the dark, but from the way Iverson recoils Keith’s struck a nerve.

It’s less of a joyous smug resolution than Keith wants. It just sends cold horror racing down his spine - he was _right_. The High Council’s behind whatever happened to Shiro. Whatever he was hiding, whatever he was going to show Keith, the Council found it first and -

“What happened to Shirogane is irrelevant,” Iverson snaps back, just as angry, just as heated. “You dabbed in the Proscribed Arts, Kogane, and for that there is no quarter other than my single offer. If you do not renounce these Books you will be Banished. Your Banishment will be from the City and all lands Armethalieh holds: you will be declared Outlaw, and no farm or village in our borders will offer you sanctuary or aid. You will be Banished at Evensong through the Delfier Gate, never to return. At Dawn, the Outlaw Hunt will pass through those same gates, and if you are still within our Border they will rend you limb from limb until no piece of you is left. No one has ever escaped the Outlaw Hunt. _Now_ do you understand the severity of your crime?”

Keith can’t answer. The tendrils of horror spread ice through his spine, dragging his feet like lead weights. It’s not the thought of leaving the City that terrifies him. It’s not the thought of never returning, except for that if he leaves, he’ll _never find Shiro._ If Shiro’s trapped somewhere in Armethelieh, held prisoner in some High Mage’s _house_ for some crime Keith still doesn’t know the context of - if Keith’s _not here to get him out -_

If Keith’s _not here._

“Renounce the books,” Iverson orders. “This is your choice.”

The choice.

The choice presses down on his shoulders all at once, the weight of it abrupt and demanding and Keith.

Keith can’t breathe.

_When the choice comes, you must decline._

A wave of _certainty_ bears down on him, fills him up. It isn’t calm. There’s a tingling under his skin. A promise, waiting to be honored. A promise, not yet fulfilled on either side.

He’d made a deal. And he’d found out, hadn’t he? In a very loose sort of way, but he’d found out. The High Council had done something to Shiro. It’s their fault he’s gone.

The Wild Magic answered, and Keith had promised.

He’d found out.

All that - this big of a Price - for _this small of an answer?_

“Do you renounce the books?” Iverson asks, one last time.

Keith promised. The magic will not let him.

_I’m sorry, Shiro._

“No,” he hears himself say. “No, I do not.”

 

**08\. Magic always has a Price.**

_All magic has a price._

And when you cast a spell, no matter which form of magic, High Magick or Wild, the price must be paid.

There are no exceptions.

Fortunately for Keith, the Wild Magic is not necessarily unkind.

 

**+1. Lance**

 

> _The lesser gates - together only large enough to admit a single cart at a time - clanked shut behind him, and through the chiming of the City bells, he heard the booming of the bolts being thrown home, cutting him off from the City forever._
> 
> _He was cast out._
> 
> _Banished._
> 
> _…Banishment was murder._
> 
> _\- The Outstretched Shadow, pgs. 162-164_

 

Elves consider it the height of rudeness to be asked a direct question.

Which of course Keith doesn’t know, since he’s never met an elf up until now. “You’re an _elf?!”_

“Okay, first, _rude_ ,” Lance says. His pointed ears twitch in irritation. “Second, _duh_ , but I’ll forgive you since clearly you’ve never met anyone as fabulous as me. I’m here to tell you what your MagePrice is, Human, so listen up.”

The pine needles in Keith’s palm are still smoking, mixed with his blood from the Calling spell. He drops them to the ground, stamping them into the road leading to the Delfier Gate, locked forever behind him. Snow crunches under his boot. “Go on.”

Lance’s face is ethereal, lean and utterly serious. Keith’s sure he’s staring. The City Wall leers down at them from the little bit of distance Keith put between it and himself since dusk, shivering as night fell and the City turned her back on him. On everything he’s ever known. On Pidge. “The Price for my help is this. You cannot speak or talk to another Human being for three Moonturns and a Sennight. If you break this MagePrice you will lose your voice forever and no spell of Wild Magic will bring it back.”

Keith hesitates. He’d cast the Calling Spell out of desperation, asking for _anyone_ to help, but the disappointment from the last time he’d paid a MagePrice still lingers fresh in his mind. “Why would I want your help?”

“Wow, still rude.” Lance rolls his eyes. “I’ve explained it. I can get you over the Border. Accept it or don’t, it’s your choice.”

“But you’re the one -”

“Accept it or not, Human,” Lance says, frustrated. Keith didn’t know elves could get frustrated. …Keith didn’t really know elves _existed_. “I’m just speaking for the Wild Magic here. It doesn’t have to be _you_ I help over the Border. I can sit here and wait for the next idiot to get Banished out those gates. I’m sure there’s a rebellious friend or three of yours coming out any minute now.”

“No,” Keith snaps. At least, he hopes that’s the answer. Pidge still has no idea. “It’s just me. Can you really get me over the Border?”

“Humans are so uncivilized,” Lance laments, sighing delicately. “Dude, stop with the questions. Since you’re clearly in a state of shock and your ears aren’t working correctly, _yes,_ I can. But not if we don’t hurry. Three Moonturns and a Sennight. No Human talky-talk. That’s the Price for my help. It doesn’t look like you have many other options.”

Keith hesitates for one more moment. Giving up any sort of freedom is terrifying - especially after the utter failure of the last Spell he’d cast - but Lance is right. He doesn’t have much of a choice. And it’s not like he’s going to meet another human out here, anyway.

“I accept,” he says. The binding pressure lifts from both their shoulders.

“Thank the Stars,” Lance breathes, straightening. His cloak brushes against the quiver on his back as he sets off down the road. Keith hurries to follow. “Okay. Guess you’re stuck with me. Now, I know they’re not going to send the Hunt out after you until Dawn, but there’s a lot of land between here and the edge of the Border. Your City’s pretty greedy. And unless you can fight off an Outlaw Hunt with nothing but your bare hands and a stick like the last dude I heard about, we gotta hustle.”

Keith stops, feet sticking on the road as if he’s been glued there. “Wait. Wait, _what?”_

Lance groans. “Seriously, stop with the questions! I’ll forgive you tonight but not tomorrow, _stars above,_ the Gods must think I can handle _anything_ if they gave me a Price like you!”

“I’m _trying,”_ Keith snaps. “This is hard for me, in case you haven’t noticed!”

“I know what it’s like to lose your home,” Lance shoots back, “Come _on_. Maybe humans need to be standing still to speak, but I can argue while walking.”

Keith can’t argue the wisdom of that, and scrambles after the elf again. “What you said. The last…dude. You’ve helped someone escape the Outlaw Hunt before?”

“By the First Leaf, your Manners need some help,” Lance says, exasperated and insulted. “Not me specifically, but I’ve heard every detail. Everyone has. Human comes out of the City, dressed in that hideous cloak just like you, gets a gods-blessed _unicorn_ to help him out, except the City’s pissed and sends so many Stone Hounds after him he never should have survived. Dude fights them off entirely. Hey, perhaps you’ve heard of him. White flop of hair, scar like this.”

He drags his forefinger across the bridge of his nose.

…too much to hope for. Keith shakes his head. “No.”

“Bummer,” Lance says, and even sounds like he means it. “Well, maybe you’ll meet him someday. Shiro’s really nice, for a human.”

For the second time that evening Keith’s feet skid to a halt so fast he nearly trips, face-first into snow. Inside him, somewhere, a key slots into a lock and turns home. A spell, nearing completion. A rush in his ears so powerful it sounds like a lion’s roar.

His…the first Price -

“For the fourth time, come _on,”_ Lance snaps. “We have so far to go between here and Hunk’s place it’s not even funny. This must be some human thing, to make it four steps and stop walking. Perhaps your feet don’t work.”

The Council’s evasive _Shirogane is irrelevant_ wasn’t the answer to Keith’s spell.

_Lance is._

“Shiro,” Keith breathes. “Did you say _Shiro?”_

“Of course I did,” Lance says. Keith’s heart skips a beat, fluttering awake with a new pulse, a beating pressure, an _answer to a spell he’d been sure wouldn’t work._ “Last I heard he’s still paying his MagePrice, and I’m not sure he and Allura are back from the North yet, but I definitely said Shiro. I’m guessing from the way you’re staring at me with your mouth open like that that you _have_ heard of him!”

“Y-yeah,” Keith manages. “Can you - I - that is - I’d be thrilled if you’d take me to him?”

“Points for effort,” Lance says, and actually nods in near approval. “We’ll work on it. And sure, if that’s what you want. First, though, we have to make sure you survive the Hunt. C’mon, Human. We’ve got a long ways to go and not much time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked what you read please consider leaving me a comment; comments literally make my day over here. You can also feel free to pop by [tumblr](http://butteredonions.tumblr.com) and say hello!
> 
> There are only two more AU fills to come for this series - one is currently tumblr-exclusive, and the other is in production (appearing sometime in Jan. 2017). Happy New Year and best wishes for 2017!
> 
> (originally posted [here](http://butteredonions.tumblr.com/post/154808689858/oh-wow-au-headcanons-um-how-about-for-your))


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